To help out the more cultured connoisseurs of female beauty among you, we’ve compiled an alternative to FHM’s yearly ogle-fest that has a (slightly) loftier aim – to bring you the 100 Sexiest Women In Art, from the buxom beauties of the Renaissance to pop art poseurs and back again (with help from our friends ArtFinder).

Will the Mona Lisa be our Tulisa? Are Klimt's muses sexier than Cheryl? And what about Degas’ endless bathing beauties – will they beat Keeley Hazell?!

Spanning the works of art history from countries around the world, we bring you our top 100 sexy paintings, many of which did that old thing – nudity – long before FHM was a twinkle in an amorous teenager’s eye.

Of course, this being art, we don't quite mean 'sexiness' in the same way. Sometimes it is just a certain style of painting or a piece of imagery that lends these pieces their sensuality.

From the top ten onward, we’ll be explaining exactly why we picked the paintings that we did. Some of the results might surprise you.

As ever, we want to hear what you think. Did we get it right? Are there any glaring absences? And should we do a 100 Sexiest Men In Paint next?

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100 Sexiest Women In Art

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Artfinder

In his lifetime leading the Realist movement in 19th-century France, Courbet frequently courted controversy by painting so-called lower class members of society, from portraits of peasants to the working conditions of the poor.
His Woman with white stockings is an extension of this ambition, and reminds us that people can be beautiful or alluring without being locked into a false pose.
Rather than make her ugly, the fact his subject is caught in the ungainly but human action of dressing makes her more, not less attractive.

Matisse's famous Decoupages of block blue, sitting nudes are not conventionally sexy . They don't have facial features, for a start.
But look long enough at the shapes, curves and angles of his portraits, and before long you realise that the Frenchman truly captured something of the essence of female grace and beauty.

Catherine Abel's painting captures not just a very beautiful woman, but an entire aesthetic inspired by the Art Deco movement. Her subject is sexy not because of her looks but because of the confidence and sense of self she exudes. It helps, of course, that she could also comfortably hold her own on the cover of FHM any time she wanted.

Everyone knows that people look sexiest when they're not trying to, and aren't aware anyone is looking. Edward Hopper, that great chronicler of American life, gives us just such a scene in his beautiful painting Morning In A City.
Comfortably naked and lost in her thoughts as a new day breaks outside her window, the figure in the painting encapsulates that wonderful passage of time that occurs between sleep and being full awake.

Of the many ideals Leonardo da Vinci strived to achieve with his work, depicting true beauty was one of them. His masterpiece, the Mona Lisa is seen by many as his highest accomplishment in this sense, but for us it's all about Cecilia.
The mistress of his patron in Milan Duke Lodovico Sforza, Cecilia is painted as angelic, delicate and chaste, but her meaningful, mischevious gaze hints at hidden passions. Or perhaps it's just us.
In any case, she manages to look good holding an weasel, which we suspect is beyond even Cheryl Cole.

if you've got this far in the list, you'll have noticed that Gustav Klimt crops up a fair bit - and with good reason. The Austrian was as obsessed with the female body as any man has ever been, and painted most of his portraits with strong sense of eroticism.
But there is something about Judith that sets her apart from his other visions of female sexuality. Nowhere near as explicit or heavily symbolic as much of his work, it's the expression on her face - lust? Ecstasy? Mirth? - that earns her a spot in our top ten.

The English Pre-Raphaelite John William Waterhouse loved painting images from Greek mythology and Arthurian legend.
And few were more beautiful - or seductive - than his brooding portrayal of Cleopatra, the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.
Glaring out at her kingdom with the poise and menace you'd expect from a leader who believed herself to be the reincarnation of an Egyptian goddess, Cleopatra is art's ultimate femme fatale.

Back before lad's mags existed, Lichtenstein was already parodying the ways in which women were presented in popular culture - in this case, comic strips.
He created a series of typical blonde beauties with ironic thought bubbles that satirised both stereotypes and male fantasies.
Meaning his Girl at Piano is not only a looker, but a smart cookie too.

Dan Kitchener's street art credentials could scarcely be much cooler.
His work has been featured on everything from PS3 games to Paul McCartney's 2011 tour to TV spots for Jay-Z's The Blueprint III album. Oh - and he nominated for Urban Artist of the Year on the Banksy Forum.
This stunning painting takes the traditional beauty of a Japanese Geishas and gives her a modern sexiness that catapulted it into our top two.

In at number one, it's a piece from the master of Modernism, Pablo Picasso.
The crowning glory from a sequence of portraits Picasso made of his lover and muse Marie-Thérèse Walter at his studio at the Chateau de Boisgeloup, the accentuated curves, warm colours and coy expression are all heady expressions of love, but perhaps the real deal sealer is the metamorphic image - or 'double' - on Walter's face that reveals two figures kissing.
Any woman who inspired this painting - even from one of the great masters - must have been sexy in a way that most of today's pouting magazine models could only dream of.